Live Review: Battlesnake - Underworld, London 07/08/2025
All hail Battlesnake! Your new favourite Australian Metal Band deliver an appropriate tour-de-force that lights up the Underworld with ferocious support from Mother Vulture and Dead Air.
Touring their new album Dawn of the Exultants and the Hunt for the Sheperd, Australian metal band Battlesnake stepped into the legendary Underworld to deliver a sweltering hot solo set in the wake of festival stops at 2000 Trees, Download and Attitude. Steeped in mythos with appropriate white costume get-up and reading verse as if biblical in nature, the rising titans took centre stage and delivered an epic theatrical approach that fuses elements of Queen, King Gizzard and Judas Priest for a unique stage show that has to be seen live to be believed.
First up – Mother Vulture took the stage; from Bristol with lots of jokes about getting lost in London and only arriving 20 minutes before stage doors. It doesn’t stop them from delivering a hell of set to promote their new album Cartoon Violence, and joke about their album launch show being promoted at Exeter in January next year, but there’s no point promoting it because nobody will come from London; it’s too far away. Their recent tracks are heavier and their songs are polished and refined, evolved from their chaotic start but nonetheless engaging – perfectly intuned for a run at festivals. They always create killer noise and chaos with their hard rock barrage delivering a monumental live set – paying homage to the likes of AC/DC and Black Sabbath – the influence that is all over today’s track list.
Next up is Dead Air, who make the most of the immaculate Underworld sound system. Fast Food World is a delight of a song and they even have new unreleased songs to play in the form of Black Flag, taking aim across the board at global overconsumption and throwaway culture. It’s got high speed riffs, biting lyrics and high-tempo energy that keeps the crowd sustained and very much warmed up by the time that Battlesnake take centre stage – a seven piece band that have emerged from the depths of the underworld and tell an appropriately mythological story – frontman Sam Frank uses Pie Jesu from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as a walk-on cue, in script and sculpture and you know you’re in good hands. There’s a Terry Gilliam feel all over their dress sense and humour; eclectic in songwriting and great at creating a mythos that does not feel too tied down to any one place sense or time. Beyond genres, beyond boundaries – this is insanely ridiculous territory here that must be seen live to be believed that it happened – it felt like you were witnessing a sermon as much as a metal show.
Then we’re into the main set proper – a new dawn is promised – Dawn of the Exultants opens by promising the stirring of a spirit, an awakening – “fostering in the abyss awaiting the return of their biomecha deity”. It’s a sermon for a new kind of god; and that god is Battlensake. The fans are chanting the band’s name long before the end of the set, and it’s the kind of set that has it all – crowd surfers, sit-downs into a mosh and circle pits, just the kind of energy that Battlesnake can promise a packed-out Underworld. I am the Vomit is a barnstormer of a song to follow up – their soaring vocals and unrelenting energy back up their stage presence – “I am the vomit, I rid the earth of sin” is a hell of a way to come on as they weave their own mythology into their songs – it feels appropriately Highlander and Excalibur in tone, the band weaving very much from 80s fantasy epics and no small amount of Dungeons and Dragons, dipping in at times to stoner rock territory that really captures the high point of gigs in the middle of festival season, which can be a tall order; especially when Bloodstock has already started letting in guests this weekend. The crowd is nonetheless engaged and we are ready for a firecracker of an evening.
Motorsteeple calls back to the album that made Battlesnake known, The Rise and Demise of the Motorsteeple, and the pure theatre performance that the band make the most of the fact that they’ve got the most metal band name to ever band name. There is so many good riffs throughout the set you can’t help but admire its brilliance – Beezlebug II is catchy, repetitive in nature – easy to sing along to. The crowd are getting warmed up and in the mood for some dancing; a guy gets on stage for a bit of crowd surfing as there’s no barrier and the chaos is unleashed – it’s what you expect at a Battlesnake gig and it’s the most lively I’ve seen the Underworld in quite a while – expect them to keep rising and rising up the charts and the gig venues as they go – they’re tailor made for a festival show and I’m tempted to skip the first half of Godspeed! You Black Emperor to go and see them again at Arctangent next week. That’s no small feat.
The back end of the set keeps the tempo high and the energy flowing. They keep up the cinematic storytelling throughout their set that doesn’t let up; unrelenting. Nightmare King is a tour de force – teasing the coming of a mythical king awaiting on his mountain that feels like a fable from a ghost story.
With time to end on an AC/DC cover song that brings the house down, Battlesnake leave a memorable impression on the audience. There’s few left in the room not converted to the raw power of an Australian metal band who are only destined to get bigger and bigger. Expect great things to come; with a confident frontman performance from Sam Frank who is aware of the tongue in cheek nature that his costumes suggest and has the platform of an entertainer who seems ready made to catapult the band into stadiums.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
